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Dessert

Chocolate Frosting

A sweet frosting made from sugar, chocolate, water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine sugar and warm water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the mixture threads.

  3. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  4. Slowly pour the boiling sugar mixture over the beaten egg white while stirring continuously.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Chocolate + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that sets into the frosting's sweet, glossy body.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Chocolate
Adds flavor and color to the frosting; amount is not specified in the record.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg white partly and stabilize the foam, and it must be poured slowly while stirring so the egg white does not scramble or deflate.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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